Without looking like you’re wearing a costume.
It works for the same reason the best celebrity style usually works.
It doesn’t look stylish.
Or rather, it does, apparently, this is a movie. But it looks like a wardrobe type that ishe canthey are collected by a real person who has a certain taste and a long habit of dressing in a certain way. That’s why it feels believable in a way that most on-screen wardrobes don’t.
And I suspect that’s where some of the magic comes from, because the line between costume design and Gosling’s tasteit is dimto say the least. The fox card, science fiction t-shirts, a mix of precious knitwear, casual workwear staples, and ultra-special eyewear all feel at least as close to her instincts. Nocompletelyhis, I’m sure.
Ryland Grace doesn’t dress like a smart professional, or the Hollywood version of smartan eccentric scholar. He dresses like someone who has come to a few things he likes and continues to wear them. A man with a strange card that sticks to him in a strange way (and is not acknowledged by others), a few funny t-shirts, decent glasses, and useful outerwear.
The fox cardigan is a piece that everyone is holding on to, and fair enough. Mary Maxim, Canada’s largest mail-order knitting company in business since 1956, popularized this sweater style. It draws on that old curling-sweater tradition: all outdoorsy nostalgia, sporting associations, and eccentric animal motifs.
For the film, the costume department started with Mary Maxim’s pattern, changed the real wolves to foxes (apparently at Gosling’s request), and knitted five sweaters for production. Which is about as far from an off-the-rack tie-in as you can get.
Mary Maxim product photos of their knitting patterns: Left, originalwolf pattern; right, modifiedpattern foxfor the movie
That one detail tells you almost everything you need to know. The sweater is big, straight, a little old, not weird, and flattering in any modern space movie way. It seems like something a real person would love for partly logical reasons.
But I think it’s also fair to say that the fox sweater is probably the scorpion jacket of the decade from Drive. In the movie, it’s perfect. We all wanted it. But when you go out and buy something directly, everyone knows what you did. It’s very clear, you dress like a character in a character’s costume.
That is, you do, if you want tothe thing itself. But if what you really like is the feel of the cabin,then chasing a fox sweater is probably the wrong course.
A better course is to find a real world piece that gives you the same charge without changing the costume. And here is the obvious answer is the classic Pendleton Westerly sweater.
It’s not covered by the fox, sadly and obviously. But effect-wise it’s surprisingly close to the same ground: heavy unit, heritage feel, bold retro pattern. Itit wasworn by the Dude in The Big Lebowski, yes, but it was there before that movie and after it too.
If the fox cardigan had been sitting on Amazon for the past ten years the way Pendleton has, yes, people would be comfortable wearing it.
Pendleton doesn’t have that problem. Pair it with a chambray shirt and denim, or throw it over a faded band belt, and you’re in movie world without looking like you’re dressed like Ryland Grace.
Of course, if you look anything like this, it’s probably safer to avoid this sweatshirt.
And a useful part of the wardrobe is not really foxes. It’s a mix.
In fact, the beauty presented here is not a mystery.Like Gosling’s style, it relies on two silos:about 70% premium Americana workwear and 30% premium indie fades.
The first bit is the basics, denim, chambray, outerwear close to work, solid sweaters, appropriate boots, casual things that are useful.
The second beat is where the character comes in, a casual graphic tee, a yellow layer, retro wireframe glasses…a vintage sweater with two giant fox heads on it.
That’s how men develop their personal style, by building on a foundation and letting a few specific favorites keep repeating.
T-shirts make more sense in that light. These science books are reportedly based on comic science shirts worn by the director’s son, the best if the wardrobe just went out and bought anything that looks unusual. And band tees do the same job. A graphic tee like that gives the wardrobe a little biography. Done right, it speaks to personal preference, habit, and a person accumulating things over time rather than putting them all together at once.
Grace wearing a Hermanos Gutiérrez band t-shirt, which I’m happy with because it’s a random draw and I lovetheir wonderful, instrumental music
Then there are the glasses, which appear to be classic Savile Row T48 Rimway frames, semi-rimmed, slightly tapered at the bridge, and interesting without being gimmicky.
If you’re looking for a similar look without going antique hunting, Shuron Ronwinne or Moscot Plotz are probably the closest obvious alternatives.
A surprisingly detailed question and answer on his Converse in the movie and Scorpion Drive jacket:
It also helps that the film repeats bits and pieces. Original clothing is repeated. Sometimes that means you end up with a sweater-as-jacket-hoodie-alternative layer that you throw on whenever you need something extra, even if it’s a little more defined and has two big foxes on it. That’s what makes a cabin feel like a person.
And maybe that’s why it came with people. Not because it’s nostalgic in the usual James Bond-style film sense, but because it makes it easy to wear graphic tees, bright yellows, weird vintage sweaters with animal heads on them, and retro wireframe glasses, and still look modern, put together, and not like you’re doing fashion.
Nothing in that is a dream. It’s just kind of normal.
Which is often the most interesting thing anyway.